Paintball Magazine Paintball Magazine May 2020 Issue | Page 19

The first thing
that you need
to know is that the
original “Airgun Designs”
that was owned by Tom
Kaye, closed in 2005. Dave
Zupan, long time Engineer and
Tech extraordinaire with AirGun
Designs, arranged with Tom to continue
to sell out the AGD inventory under the
name of Airgun Designs USA. Dave continued
to sell AGD parts until 2015. They just stopped
the mass manufacturing of paintball guns
like they used to. You couldn’t order a simple
designed standard Automag from your local
paintball store. That was ten long, lean years
for Automag enthusiasts. The company was
going through changes as all things do, and
this led to the current and common belief that
AGD had faded from existence. This however
was never the case and Automag fans are
rabid creatures. The AGD faithful fought very
hard to keep the torch from fading. In 2015,
Tim Glavin, more affectionately known as
Sandman of the juggernaut Team SWARM and
one of AGD’s original employees from the early
1990’s, created www.airgundesigns.com and
worked out a deal with Dave Zupan to to sell
AGD parts and “reboot” the Automag to it’s
rightful place within the growing mechanical
paintball scene.
Fast forward to today. For the last five years,
if you wanted an Automag, you had to go to
the AirGun Designs webpage to order it. Once
there, you are given 2 options. You can choose
between the RT ULE Custom or a TAC-ONE
body style. Once you pick your body style,
you are given a choice of drop down menus
to choose your trigger style preference, your
feed neck preference, etcetera. From your
order, Tim custom builds your Automag to
your specifications. It’s all very simple, plain,
and low key…. And THAT is where the paintball
community made its biggest mistake. There is
a third option… one that has been kept secret
to a very select and chosen few for a very long
time. You can e-mail Tim and he will build
you something truly custom. Something one
off. Something truly original and amazing. He
works with many of the biggest names in the
custom gun market and orders those parts in
for special custom builds. Since these custom
guns are made in the AGD facility, these
paintball guns are authentic AirGun Designs
Automags.
All caught up? Good!
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